Steinbrenner: 'We're not going to get down'

NEW YORK -- With the Yankees approaching the midway point of their schedule, managing general partner/co-chairperson Hal Steinbrenner said that he has been "aggravated, frustrated and angry" at his team's performance, directing his disappointment at a roster that has greatly underachieved from its expectations of championship-caliber play.

Steinbrenner said that the players know that their output has been unacceptable. He expressed confidence that general manager Brian Cashman, manager Aaron Boone and the Yankees' coaching staff are still the correct personnel to steer the franchise back to the postseason.

"Make no mistake about it, the majority of the responsibility lies with the players," Steinbrenner said. "They're the ones on the field. They're a group of very talented professional athletes that are playing this game at the highest level in the world. They need to fix this problem, because everyone -- including our fan base -- has had enough."

Clad in a hooded Yankees sweatshirt, Steinbrenner spoke with the media via Zoom on Thursday morning from his Tampa, Fla., office, hours after the club suffered its most demoralizing defeat of the year. New York scored seven first-inning runs to knock out the Angels' Shohei Ohtani, only to endure two rain delays and a ninth-inning collapse in an 11-8 loss on Wednesday night at Yankee Stadium.

"It was a tough loss," Steinbrenner said. "I was very happy when I saw the offense the last couple of games, particularly [Wednesday] against an incredible pitcher. That's a tough way to lose it, but we're not going to get down. We're going to continue to do everything we can to win, win, win."

Steinbrenner said that he has been frustrated by the Yankees' inconsistent offense; their 329 runs scored rank 22nd in the Majors, and New York leads all big league clubs with 33 outs on the basepaths, which he called "perplexing." Cashman has backed Boone and the coaches, a stance that Steinbrenner said he agrees with.

"Nobody is working harder than the coaches," Steinbrenner said. "The most important thing to me always in any given year is that the players respect the coaches, believe in the coaches -- and that's absolutely the case here."

Boone said that he has met with Steinbrenner several times this season, and they spoke via telephone this week.

"He's pretty measured and very much in command of his emotions," Boone said. "I don't think he's ever screamed and hollered at me or anything like that. He's been pretty pointed with some comments at times about what's going on and, 'Hey, this needs to be better.' But most of our conversations are very measured and leveled and really just, 'Hey, what are we seeing?'"

Steinbrenner said that he continues to believe in the team's emphasis upon analytics, saying that he is a "big fan" of performance science. He acknowledged that he would have preferred a lineup with more left-handed balance, but he said that he believes Cashman has "done a good job" in constructing the roster.

"This team that we put together leaving Spring Training was a very, very good team," Steinbrenner said. "They just haven't played up to their potential that I believe they still have. It's essentially the same team that we had [in 2019 and 2020]. These aren't aging players; these guys are in their primes."

Cashman has characterized the Yankees as "buyers" in advance of the July 30 Trade Deadline, and Steinbrenner said that he has not considered the possibility of a partial tear-down, as the club did in 2016. Steinbrenner added that he would "absolutely" authorize exceeding the Competitive Balance Tax threshold if a certain player would put his team over the top.

"If I feel we're not good enough and we need another piece to be the championship-caliber team that we want to be and expect to be, then I'm going to seriously consider doing whatever I need to do," Steinbrenner said, citing the club's 2014 signing of pitcher Masahiro Tanaka as an example.

Steinbrenner does not dispute the assertion that his father, the late George M. Steinbrenner, would have likely handled the team's current issues much differently. From 1973-90, "The Boss" cycled through 19 field managers, 15 pitching coaches and 13 general managers, showing no hesitation in dismissing personnel in-season.

"Look, he certainly did that a lot," Steinbrenner said. "I think what people forget is that often times it didn't help, didn't work. Quite frankly, he was criticized for it. I'm just a believer in seeing an entire body of work from an employee, regardless of what department they're in. We do that year to year. Doing a knee-jerk reaction to appease this person or that person in the middle of the year when I really don't think there's a problem, that's certainly something I'm not going to do."